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Jewish Journal

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August 11, 2009

Obama Ready With (or for) Peace Plan?

Leave a Comment / Israel, United States, Worldwide /

Are the parties in the Middle East ready for a U.S. peace plan? Or just for a plan for a peace plan?

Talk of a near-term U.S. peace plan was spurred last week when a State Department official said one would be in place “within weeks” — a projection confirmed within a day by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

“I think it will be in a matter of weeks,” spokesman, P.J. Crowley, said in an Aug. 3 briefing when he was asked when George Mitchell, Obama’s envoy to the Middle East, would present a plan.

Barak echoed the same message a day later during a briefing to the Knesset’s Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee, according to a Reuters report.

“In the coming weeks,” Barak said, “their plan will be formulated and presented to the parties.”

Officials in the pro-Israel community and among foreign diplomats now say those projections were premature, that Obama administration officials were preparing the ground for the modalities of peace talks rather than a plan with specifics.

“What we know with our contacts with the administration is that they were satisfied with results of conversations Mitchell had in Israel,” a European diplomat said. “There appears to be some confidence in the White House that there is an overall optimism that a breakthrough can be made — but there is no specific plan.”

According to the current scenario, Obama may be ready by the start of the U.N. General Assembly in mid-September to speak about deadlines and about where the talks will take place and who will participate.

Specifics, however, have been frustrated by a who-blinks-first dynamic that has overtaken U.S. diplomacy for the time being.

Arab states want Israel to commit to a settlement freeze before they announce concessions that would include allowing Israeli overflights and limited trade. Israel wants to see the concessions, and a stated recognition of Israel’s Jewish nature from the Palestinians and other Arabs, before it commits to a freeze. And the Palestinians have said that Israel must freeze settlement before they return to the table.

Hopes for progress were not helped by the long-delayed congress convened last week by Fatah, the mainstream Palestinian party that controls affairs in the West Bank. The congress bogged down in debates over the tactics of “resistance” as opposed to peacemaking.

The belligerence at the conference, with resolutions demanding all of Jerusalem and accusing Israel of murdering Yasser Arafat, belied a readiness for peace and handed an opening to U.S. pro-Israel groups that have scrambled in recent weeks for the means to defend Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s settlement policies.

The Fatah congress had the effect of marginalizing Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah leader and Palestinian Authority president, American Jewish Committee executive director David Harris said.

Another distraction for the Obama administration was his awarding of a Presidential Medal of Freedom to Mary Robinson, the former U.N. human rights commissioner who has been blamed in some circles for having failed to keep the U.N. conference on racism in Durban in 2001 from becoming an anti-Israel fest.

That news invited a flood of critiques from Jewish officials who were glad for the break from having to explain the court-ordered eviction of Palestinian families from Jerusalem homes they had occupied for decades.

The gaps between Israel and its neighbors in the Middle East and between some pro-Israel groups and the White House do not mean Obama’s peacemakers will stand down. And Barak, the Israeli defense minister, warned his colleagues that they should be ready to play along when the White House steps up with a plan.

That strategy would put Israel at an advantage, said an official with a pro-Israel group who consults with the Obama administration.

“That would be very positive for Israel-U.S. relations,” said the official, from a group that favors increased U.S. pressure on Israel.

The flurry of controversies means the White House is likelier to proceed at a slower, more careful pace, said David Makovsky, a top analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“There’s no value in coming out with full guns if you’re going to fail,” said Makovsky, who has intensely lobbied the Obama and Netanyahu administrations in recent weeks to consider a “borders first” solution in which Israel and the Palestinians would mutually agree on borders that would allow Israel to keep some settlements in exchange for land swaps that would amount to 100 percent of the land Israel seized in the West Bank during the Six-Day War.

Establishing borders would hand both sides a “win,” Makovsky said: Netanyahu’s government would be the first to annex West Bank settlements, and Abbas’ government would show that it won back land through negotiations, quelling claims by Hamas in Gaza that only violence works. It also would help defuse a major sticking point between Jerusalem and Washington, as Israel would not be asked to freeze settlement construction in territory slated for annexation.

Thorny issues such as Jerusalem and the status of refugees would still be on the table, but according to this theory, the momentum created by resolving borders would spur such talks forward.

“It’s like in football,” Makovsky said. “If you can’t go 100 yards, you go 70 yards.”

Obama Ready With (or for) Peace Plan? Read More »

Quentin Tarantino: ‘Hollywood’s Jewish Avenger’

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

Quentin Tarantino’s new film “Inglourious Basterds” is the ultimate Jewish revenge fantasy. In it, a band of physically intimidating American Jews, led by Brad Pitt as Lt. Aldo Raine go on a Nazi killing spree that turns the brutality of the Holocaust onto its perpetrators.

The film is generating tons of buzz for rewriting the ending to one of history’s greatest tragedies and perhaps, even more notably, for challenging the cinematic legacy of Jewish victimhood and replacing it with a brutal, empowering alternative.

We’ve got much more ‘Basterds’ coverage coming your way, including exclusive interviews with director Quentin Tarantino, producer Lawrence Bender, actor/director Eli Roth and several other cast members. But for now, check out Jeffrey Goldberg’s quite brilliant interview with Tarantino, in which the acclaimed director is painted a hero for turning Jewish victimhood on its “mother*&%$#” ear. Though it’s worth adding that Goldberg isn’t afraid to take him to task on the issue of torture. Is the film too violent? Too brutal? Is it, as Goldberg concludes, a film that could only be made by a non-Jewish director?

Read more from the Atlantic:

…I found myself sitting beside Quentin Tarantino’s pool in the Hollywood Hills, listening in wonder as the writer and director of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction diagnosed what he saw as the essential, maddening flaw of every Holocaust movie ever made.

“Holocaust movies always have Jews as victims,” he said, plainly exasperated by Hollywood’s lack of imagination. “We’ve seen that story before. I want to see something different. Let’s see Germans that are scared of Jews. Let’s not have everything build up to a big misery, let’s actually take the fun of action-movie cinema and apply it to this situation.”

It is true that most—some might even say all—films about the Holocaust focus on the persecution of Jews. The Holocaust was very bad for Jews; this is an immovable fact of history. But Tarantino isn’t wrong to suggest that the cinematic depiction of anti-Semitic persecution can become wearying over time, particularly for Semites. In Judd Apatow’s comedy Knocked Up, Seth Rogen’s character praises Steven Spielberg’s Munich for featuring Jewish assassins: “Every movie with Jews, we’re the ones getting killed. Munich flips it on its ear. We’re capping motherfuckers!”

…

Early in the film, Aldo the Apache announces the goals of his unit: “We will be cruel to the Germans, and through our cruelty they will know who we are. They will find the evidence of our cruelty in the disemboweled, dismembered, and disfigured bodies of their brothers we leave behind us.” Soon enough, the Basterds are committing war crimes, beating prisoners to death and collecting the scalps of dead Germans. “Every man under my command owes me 100 Nazi scalps,” Aldo demands.

The horror-movie director Eli Roth—his film Hostel is the most repulsively violent movie I’ve ever seen twice—plays a Basterd known as the “Bear Jew,” whose specialty is braining Germans with a baseball bat. Roth told me recently that Inglourious Basterds falls into a subgenre he calls “kosher porn.”

“It’s almost a deep sexual satisfaction of wanting to beat Nazis to death, an orgasmic feeling,” Roth said. “My character gets to beat Nazis to death. That’s something I could watch all day. My parents are very strong about Holocaust education. My grandparents got out of Poland and Russia and Austria, but their relatives did not.”

Tarantino’s producer, Lawrence Bender, says that after reading the first draft of Inglourious Basterds, he told Tarantino, “As your producing partner, I thank you, and as a member of the Jewish tribe, I thank you, motherfucker, because this movie is a fucking Jewish wet dream.” Harvey and Bob Weinstein, the film’s executive producers, also reportedly enjoyed the film’s theme of Jewish revenge.

…

It is not an accident that it took a non-Jewish director to concoct this story of brutal Jewish revenge. It is difficult to imagine a Jew in Hollywood—each one more self-conscious than the next—portraying Jews as vengeance-seeking knifemen. Neal Gabler, the author of An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, told me that Jewish revenge fantasies aren’t entirely alien to the movie industry, but they’ve always been exercises in sublimation, Superman being only the most obvious. “Jews have gone from being nonexistent in film to being thoroughly represented, but no Jew would ever make a film like Inglourious Basterds,” Gabler said. “It’s too brazen.”

Check out the trailer:

And this Atlantic video analyzing the film:

Quentin Tarantino: ‘Hollywood’s Jewish Avenger’ Read More »

Ang Lee’s Catskill Culture Clash

Leave a Comment / Cover Story, Entertainment, Film /

When half a million exuberant participants converged on Bethel, N.Y., for the legendary Woodstock Music and Art Fair 40 years ago this week, it proved a harmonious blending of two diverse populations: the young people who turned out to celebrate the festival’s ode to flower power and the older locals who largely made the festival possible in the historic Jewish mecca of the Borsht Belt.

Ang Lee’s new film, “Taking Woodstock,” which opens Aug. 28 and is based on the memoir of the same name by Elliot Tiber (born Eliyahu Teichberg) describes this unexpected intersection of cultures through the eyes of an entrepreneurial son of Jewish immigrants, who saw the festival as an opportunity to save his family’s failing bungalow colony.

Like the 2007 memoir, which was recently released in paperback (Square One Publishers), the film revolves around the family’s decrepit El Monaco motel — a collection of rotting shacks teetering on uneven foundations in White Lake, N.Y. — where cash flow had reduced to a trickle. The region had thrived during the early 20th century, when Jewish New Yorkers flocked to its accommodations to escape the summer heat; but by the 1950s, businesses were in decline as former patrons found they could travel to Florida for the same price as a Catskills vacation.

All over Bethel and nearby hamlets in 1969, the surviving motels are in decline, with porches sagging and shutters hanging off their hinges. Tiber, a closeted gay interior designer living in Manhattan, has been called home by his desperate parents to manage the El Monaco, which by that time is in such dire straits that the advertised air conditioning units are dummy boxes built into the walls of each room.

Motivated in equal parts by duty and guilt (his over-the-top shrewish mother often describes how she escaped pogroms in Minsk), Tiber becomes president of the Bethel Chamber of Commerce and pounces when neighboring towns refuse to house the Woodstock festival. He has a permit for his own music festival and his close friend, the American Jewish dairy farmer Max Yasgur, possesses a cow pasture that could provide the perfect venue. Before long, impresarios descend upon the area, by helicopter and limousine, and set up camp at the El Monaco; then the hippies begin to arrive, espousing peace and love to the elderly Teichbergs, who are befuddled by their music and casual nudity but ecstatic as rooms and cash registers fill to overflowing.

Liev Schreiber plays a drag queen and ex-Marine who offers security services to the motel; Emile Hirsch portrays a burned-out Vietnam vet; Eugene Levy is Yasgur, who negotiates a savvy deal for the use of his land but becomes a beloved figure when he addresses the festival crowd; and Demetri Martin stars as Tiber, whose quest for personal freedom mirrors the spirit of Woodstock itself.

The seeds of the film were planted at 5:30 a.m. one morning in 2007 backstage at a San Francisco television talk show where Tiber was promoting his book and the Oscar-winning Lee (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” “Brokeback Mountain”) was discussing his Chinese-language spy thriller, “Lust, Caution.” The gregarious Tiber promptly gave Lee a copy of his memoir and delivered a two-minute pitch about why it would make a great movie. 

“Usually when someone gives me a book, I walk around the corner and throw it in the nearest trash can,” Lee said, a tad sheepishly, from his home in Larchmont, N.Y. But something about Tiber’s pitch made Lee recall how he viewed his 1997 film, “The Ice Storm,” as “the hangover of Woodstock”; the film explored the consequences of free love arriving belatedly to an American suburb in 1973.

Lee also remembered how much TV news of the festival had meant to him as a 14-year-old in Taiwan, where police forcibly cut off the hair of would-be hippies. “And I had just done six tragedies in a row — I was exhausted, in the abyss and looking to do a comedy, something warm at heart and without cynicism,” he said. “I thought Elliot’s book could provide that material, as well as capture the spirit of the festival by observing the changes in the Teichberg family dynamic.”

Lee’s English-language films often explore his take on American culture; they have been so diverse — from “Sense and Sensibility” to “Hulk” — that creating them has required meticulous research on the part of the Taiwan-born director. But the Borsht Belt proved an easier study: “I am surrounded by Jews, working in the film industry,” Lee explained with a laugh. “And James Schamus, my screenwriter and creative partner, is Jewish, not Irish; his ancestors changed their last name.”

As Lee prepared to shoot “Taking Woodstock,” his Jewish friends and colleagues regaled him with stories of childhood sojourns in the Catskills. “I also felt I wanted to do this Jewish material because I know these friends and because some of our greatest filmmakers and films have a Jewish sensibility.

“I feel that Jewish people know Chinese people very well, that somehow we are related, in our emphasis on tradition and a certain way of life,” he added. “James, for example, understood me well even before I spoke fluent English; he would write my scripts as early as ‘The Wedding Banquet,’ reading Chinese poetry, philosophy and literature as background, and then try to write the dialogue, and I would ask, ‘What is that?’ And out of frustration, he would give up and just write the characters like Jews, and I would say, ‘Oh, that’s very Chinese’ … in the way that people process their thoughts and how they go about their motivation and relationships.”

The Teichberg family’s experience with pogroms and resettlement also felt familiar to Lee. “We, too, use the term Diaspora,” he explained of Chinese immigrants to the United States and elsewhere. “My father’s family members were part of the landlord class in mainland China, so his parents were shot and his entire family wiped out during the Maoist purges.”

Lee’s father, the sole survivor, relocated to Taiwan, where the filmmaker was born in 1954 and, as the first son of a first son, was expected to carry on the Lee name and to help make up for the loss of the family tree. “But being an entertainer in my culture is regarded as shameful, so I always had this guilty feeling that I was failing my father,” he said.

His viewing of the classic Dustin Hoffman film, “The Graduate,” however, convinced him that filmmaking was not necessarily a frivolous aspiration; and Woodstock gave him a glimpse of the freedoms that were possible in the United States.

Elliot Tiber’s character in “Taking Woodstock” — which has received mixed reviews — eventually breaks free of his family entanglements and finds a haven in the environment of the counterculture. “But I am still forever alien, not so much different from the Jewish experience of feeling that your true culture is adrift,” Lee said.

“Taking Woodstock” opens Wednesday, Aug. 26 exclusively in New York and Los Angeles and Aug. 28 nationwide.  For information about Tiber’s memoir, visit elliottiber.com.

Ang Lee’s Catskill Culture Clash Read More »

Maccabiah Games Fine as Is, Criminals or Heroes?

Leave a Comment / Letters to the Editor /

Maccabiah Games Fine as Is
As a proud mother of a Maccabiah athlete who has won five medals in three World Maccabiah Games, I am most appreciative of Steve Soboroff’s recent interest in and support of the Maccabiah World Union (“Soboroff Raises Bar for 18th Maccabiah,” July 31). Recruiting a group of 18 to donate $50,000 each is no easy task in these economic times.

As a board member of Maccabi USA Sports for Israel, I wish to remind Mr. Soboroff and your readers that this organization has been in the trenches since the very beginning. Team USA has grown in size and success because of the dedication, hard work and fundraising skills of this group. President Toni Wortman, Chair Bob Spivak and Executive Director Jed Margolis put in countless hours to make sure all runs smoothly. Their commitment to the USA athletes and the State of Israel is second to none.

I think it is a bit presumptuous of Mr. Soboroff to assume this event needs to be professionalized to match the Olympics. To me, it is amazing that a small country like Israel comes even close to matching the grandeur of Olympic sponsorships.

Whether Israelis are involved in the games or not is insignificant because their government is and their teams are and they come to win. The significance of these games is that young Jewish athletes throughout the world find a way to relate to the State of Israel.

Aviva Sokol Monosson, Los Angeles

Criminals or Heroes?
To Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: You say we need religion and a framework to live righteously because we are human and have a mixture of good and bad (“When Rabbis Fail Their Communities,” Aug. 7), but when you choose to become a rabbi, aren’t you publicly declaring that you feel you have more to give in the “good” department?

You say they are not as guilty as Bernie Madoff, but they still did break the law, no matter how minor. When you chose to become a rabbi, did you not choose to live to a higher standard, which would include not breaking either the laws of the land or the laws of your religion?

You say how difficult it is to fund your shuls. We all have to fund our lives, pay our bills and few of us break the law to do so. Yes, some do because we are a mixture of good and bad, but when you chose to become a rabbi, did you not consider that you should be living an ethical life?

I think they chose the wrong job for their personalities.

Hilary Satz, Pacific Palisades

Jewish Values For Our State
The problems that plague California raise endless policy, budgetary and political questions. However, the sober yet stimulating analysis from Elissa Barrett and David Myers (“California Quagmire,” July 24) reminds us that our Jewish values and tradition could guide California to an ethical, sustainable budget. Their sound suggestions of property tax, corporate tax and criminal justice reform are informed by our own Jewish values of social responsibility and fairness for all. California’s problems will not solve themselves. Our representatives in Sacramento need the Jewish community — and the best of the Jewish tradition — as partners.

Sam Yebri, via e-mail

Hurray for ADL Ad
It is unusual to praise an ad in The Journal. However, the ADL full-page ad in your Aug. 7 issue addressed to the president is of the greatest importance to American Jewry. It is also addressed to those of your readers and the community at large who refuse to acknowledge that President Obama is not acting in the best interest of friendship with the greatest ally that the U.S. has. I hope this ad will spur an avalanche of letters to Obama urging him to change the direction in which he is taking our Middle East policy.

Hershey Gold, Los Angeles

Israel Must Halt Settlement Construction
The full-page ad in The Jewish Journal (Aug. 7) signed by Anti-Defamation League (ADL) National Director Abe Foxman, and National Chair Glen Lewy, damages the cause of peace for Israel. 

Telling President Obama that Arab “recognition” of Israel must come before Israel addresses expansion is counterproductive. Foxman, Lewy and the ADL ignore that Egypt and Jordan recognized Israel when they signed peace agreements with it and that the Palestinian leadership did so when it committed to peace negotiations in the early 1990s, in the context of Israel’s recognition of the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people.

Sure, the Palestinian leadership and the Arab states must do their part. That is not lost on President Obama, as he emphasized to Mr. Foxman, myself, and other Jewish leaders in a private meeting recently held in the White House. But Israel must do its part and adhere to its commitment to stop settlement construction. 

Debra DeLee, President and CEO Americans for Peace Now, Washington, D.C.

Criminals or Heroes?
In response to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s article “When Rabbis Fail Their Communities” (Aug. 7):

The Torah doesn’t rationalize cheating, stealing or laundering money just because the “end justifies the means.” Therefore, dealing in counterfeit products or laundering money, in the name of God, as Rabbi Boteach put forward, to keep a Jewish school in business, is actually an act of Chilul Hashem (the desecration of God’s name).

If the rabbis are found guilty, to many Jews and non-Jews, there would be little difference between the shameful crimes they have committed and those of Bernard Madoff. As appalling as the sins of Bernard Madoff are, he didn’t hide behind the cloak of religion. 

Danny Bental, Tarzana

Obama’s Economic Options
Coming into office, Obama had three choices for handling the economy. First, he could have cut taxes and began talking upbeat even as the economy worsened, hoping that the market alone would sort things out. Former President Bush did this, and it didn’t work. 

The second option would have been to design a stimulus package geared especially toward troubled industries and sectors. This would have prompted accusations that Obama was favoring traditionally Democratic strongholds and ignoring the rest of the nation.

Obama chose a third option, which was to design a stimulus package that gave a small lift to everyone, some aid to troubled sectors and some aid to economies that were not on the ropes. This option gives the president the least political payoff, because even now that the economy is improving, it’s hard to prove that the stimulus had much to do with it. The Republicans claim, without evidence, that the economy would have improved without the president’s big spending, and since we have no crystal ball to view alternative outcomes, no one can be sure.  So as the economy improves, watch for the Republicans to turn up the volume on this claim.

Lars Deerman, via e-mail

Beautiful Souls
This week’s suggestion for “better solutions” utilizing the Kolot organization is very sound (“Beautiful Souls,” July 31). In addition to bringing the secular and religious communities together for “open-minded study” as a way of better understanding each other, what is definitely desired or needed is the following: Universal mandatory military or alternative service for everyone with no religious exemption. What is greatly resented in the secular community is the claim that their sons and daughters are required to serve in the military but the Haredim by and large do not. And thus, the Haredim are often thought of as parasites. The required service in the military in Israel serves as an excellent equalizer and integrator. It helps bring about much mutual respect. 

Furthermore, this is not a religious issue, since the Mizrahi or Modern Orthodox community as well as the Chasidic proudly serve with distinction. Here I differ with Michael Oren in that I believe that the past, present and future of Israel is the holy city of Jerusalem; otherwise we would not constantly pray for “next year in Jerusalem.” Of course Tel Aviv, Be’er Sheva, Eilat and the other communities are also an integral part of Israel, including the settlements liberated since 1967. We need to recall especially after this Tisha B’Av commemoration, that the Second Temple was destroyed by “sinat chinam” or hatred without cause among the population. Our sages have taught us that to bring about unification is “ahavat chinam” or love and understanding among all. In Hebrew it is said, “Kol Yisrael aravim zeh bezeh,” translated as “all Israel depends on one another.”  May G-d bless Israel and all its people with wisdom and mutual love for each other.

Bernard Nichols, via e-mail

Open Letter to President Barack Obama
Over the past few months we are ever more frequently hearing about the U.S. State Department’s objections toward Israel building in existing settlements (even those that have been established three to four decades ago) in general and in Jerusalem as well. In particular the negative commentary given in regards to building a new house in East Jerusalem on private land owned by a private citizen who has received all the necessary municipal permits because of strange explanations to the effect that it would “upset the demographic character of the area.”

Was it not just over one year ago on June 4, 2008, that you (at the time a senator and presidential candidate) delivered an inspiring speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in which you declared to all present that “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided”?

What has happened in that short time since? In addition, you and your staff from the State Department are continuously speaking about Israeli settlements as the main obstacle to peace … as if they did not exist then peace would instantly reign in this area. In your speech to AIPAC the word “settlements” was mentioned only once with your advice to Israel “to refrain from building new settlements—as agreed with the Bush administration at Annapolis.”

Personally, I can attest to having been captivated by you during your presidential campaign. Your speeches were deeply inspiring and gave a message of hope to many throughout the USA and indeed the world. “Yes We Can” is a simple statement, a hope and a belief in a better world, and our individual and collective ability as nations to bring about much needed change to the good. But implicit in “Yes We Can” is also the promise that “Yes we will do what we promised to do.” Now is the time to convert those presidential campaign promises into action, in recognition of the words of Benjamin Franklin: “Well done is better than well said.”

Your strong promotion of the idea of two states for two nations may be commendable as a purely theoretical solution; however, the reality of the situation is that today three states are needed for two nations if Hamas, which is the de facto power in the Gaza Strip, is taken into account.

Having the U.S. object to building in Jerusalem and inside existing settlements to account for natural growth is sending to our adversaries precisely the very wrong message, and it practically guarantees greater intransigence and belligerency in the future. In searching for the solution to peace in our area it is of key importance to understand the internal thinking of Islam, and in particular radical Islam from their perspective, in order to avoid repeating some of the tragic mistakes made by the West in dealing with Iran before and after the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

In conclusion, I would like to recall a story about the Russian woman who asked Mr. Gorbachev, “Who invented Communism—politicians or scientists?” Mr. Gorbachev replied that he was not sure but he thought that it was politicians. The woman responded that she thought so as well, as scientists would have first experimented on mice, frogs and only then tried it out on live people.

We should learn the lessons of history here, and tread slowly and cautiously so that we do not create irreparable damage with our very good intentions.

Lev Shapiro, Herzliya, Israel

Correction
Lillian Ileto, mother of slain postal carrier Joseph Ileto, was incorrectly reported as deceased (“The Shots That Shattered Our Calm,” Aug. 7). We regret the error.

Maccabiah Games Fine as Is, Criminals or Heroes? Read More »

How I Succeeded in Hollywood by ‘Mad Men’s’ Matt Weiner

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

Approaching it’s third season, “Mad Men” can be counted as one of the most captivating shows on television. There’s hardly a newsstand in town without a January Jones magazine cover, a Jon Hamm profile or an interview with the show’s creator Matt Weiner. Plus, the show is nominated for the best dramatic series Emmy, which it won last year, and Weiner is up for four dramatic writing Emmys. Of course, we saw it all coming and scored an early sit down with Weiner back in summer of ‘07. That was before Joan Holloway raised the profile of secretaries everywhere, drinking on the job was—uh—performance enhancing and cigarette smoking began to look cool again. We owe the creation of these revolutionary trends to “Mad Men,” a show about the world of advertising in 1960s Manhattan. In Weiner’s decadent, male-dominated world, racism, sexism, antisemitism and homophobia rule the day, but those paradigms are subverted with rich, fully developed characters who happen to be female, Jewish or gay.

You may be wondering how such provocative material found its way into the Hollywood forefront. Most of it has to do with Weiner, who cerebrated over the concept for three years before finally making it big.

Here’s his story as told to The Wrap:

I had been researching this advertising idea for two years. Every night I would pay someone—I would dictate to them, and they would do research. And I would stay after work and work on this advertising thing. And in between the big second and third seasons of “Becker,” when I realized that I had a hiatus, three months where I knew that I still had a job, I just pulled the trigger.

I hired a writer’s assistant because I was so exhausted, and also I felt it was like having a personal trainer. I realized that I would work because I was paying that person $11 an hour to be there. And I knocked the show out pretty quickly. And that was the script that later became “Mad Men.”

It had been brewing for, I’m not kidding, for three years, I’d been taking notes and been thinking about it and doing research. I just did it and I gave it to my agents, and they didn’t pay any attention to it.

And finally two years later, I left “Becker.” I was working on “Andy Richter,” and I just said to my agents, “Send this script to David Chase, send it to Alan Ball.” They were both at UTA, which is where I was. And they told me Alan Ball wasn’t gonna read it; he only looked at playwrights, which I’ve since talked to him about and he was amused by. And David Chase’s show, they told me, they’re feature people, they’re “Law and Order,” they’re procedural, they’re one-hour people.

I had since gotten a manager, who really did help me a lot. And my manager told them, “If you don’t get this to David Chase, Matt’s gonna leave the agency.” So they got it to him, and a week later I was in New York on “The Sopranos.”

The most important thing people have to know is that I wrote a lot for free; I never sold a pitch.

More “Mad Men” at jewishjournal.com

Is Don Draper Jewish?

Doing Jews on TV

Matt Weiner makes Forward 50

Meshugene Men

 

How I Succeeded in Hollywood by ‘Mad Men’s’ Matt Weiner Read More »

Rivka’s Special Need

Leave a Comment / David Suissa, Opinion /

When I asked Michael Held what was “different” about Rivka Bracha Menkes, he had trouble answering. It wasn’t as severe as Down syndrome or autism or cerebral palsy, he said. It was more in the general category of “developmental disabilities,” or “special needs.”

It’s true that ever since she was a little girl, Rivka, who is now 27, has had a special need. She dreamed of getting married, and having a beautiful wedding.

Rivka was part of the first group of students in 1993 that joined Etta Israel Center, the nonprofit organization founded and run by Held. Every Sunday, Rivka would go to their Talmud Torah at Maimonides Academy, where she would learn about Judaism and play with other kids.

Over lunch at Pat’s the other day, Held explained that the important thing was to give the kids a social network, an opportunity to build friendships. “We wanted them to have something to look forward to every Sunday,” he said.

In Rivka’s case, she had plenty of experience with “looking forward” to things. Growing up in a Chabad family, her life revolved around preparing for the many Jewish rituals that enrich the Torah-observant life.

Over the years, she became somewhat of an expert in these rituals. She got to know all the popular Shabbat songs, the brachas, the holiday recipes and the prayers.

She also got to know wedding rituals.

She went to enough Chabad weddings that she learned, for example, the exact order of dancing partners for the bride: mother, mother-in-law, grandmothers, sisters, aunts and closest friends. She even knew that the bride had to change into fancy sneakers between the ceremony and the dancing.

Rivka’s knowledge of Jewish rituals served her well when she moved into Etta Israel’s first rooming house for girls in 2002, when she was 20. The idea, Held says, was to give the girls a taste of independence and prepare them for adult life.

For several years, Rivka worked, studied and built friendships. Inside, though, she never stopped dreaming about one particular Jewish ritual: finding a soulmate.

In the world of developmental disabilities, this is a big deal. It hadn’t happened yet with an Etta Israel kid. So Rivka and her family weren’t the only ones dreaming about her finding a soulmate — the dreamers also included Michael Held and the extended Etta Israel family.

Thankfully, it turns out that they have a really good matchmaker in New York for Jews with special needs. So last year, Rivka was introduced to a Chasidic single man from Brooklyn named Avraham Chaim Weiss.

How good was the matchmaker? Well, the first time I saw Rivka and Avraham was on a beautiful night in June at the Chabad in Tarzana — and they were both under a chuppah.

How do you describe a wedding that transcends the norms of weddings? It’s not easy.

All weddings are filled with love and simcha; this one had a little something extra. It had soul. You could see the joy on Rivka and Avraham’s faces, but you sensed they were also a little vulnerable. It was like they were being carried by the love that was all around them.

You felt something special in the air, and somehow you knew everyone else was feeling the same thing.

There was one moment in particular that stuck with me. Avraham comes from a Chasidic tradition different than Chabad — so unlike the classic black hat, he wore a shtreimel (fur hat).

At one point, while he was dancing furiously with a Chabadnik, he decided to exchange hats. So there he was, dancing with a Chabad hat, while the Chabadnik was dancing with a shtreimel. Call it his little contribution to Chasidic unity.

Avraham couldn’t stop dancing (I brought him a glass of water — this is my personal wedding ritual). As I saw him jump for joy in the middle of a human mass of Chasidic dancing, I turned to my friend Rabbi Yossi Shusterman and said, “This is the power of Torah, isn’t it?”

“This is Torah,” he replied.

When the rabbis weren’t looking (I hope), I took a quick peek in the women’s section to see Rivka, in her fancy sneakers, also dancing and jumping for joy. I have no doubt she followed the exact order of dancing partners that she had learned over the years.

At our lunch the other day, Held went out of his way to give credit to other people for Rivka’s success, especially to her family. You could see the satisfaction on his face. His organization’s whole mission is to help bring quality of life to kids with developmental needs and help integrate them into the “natural flow” of life.

A marriage is a breakthrough milestone on that journey.

But there’s also a lot of pain on this journey. Held is haunted by something he once heard from one of the kids: “Why did God make my life so painful?” He didn’t have an answer.

Lately, he’s been getting another question from some of the kids at Etta Israel that he hopes, one day, to have many answers to: “Dr. Held, when am I getting married?”

David Suissa, an advertising executive, is founder of OLAM magazine, Meals4Israel.com and Ads4Israel.com. He can be reached at {encode=”dsuissa@olam.org” title=”dsuissa@olam.org”}.

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Jerusalem 2009: A Tale of Two Cities

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It is said that Jerusalem is the world’s most contested territory, holy to and jealously coveted by the three Abrahamic faiths. Jerusalem is also a city where Jews and Arabs live adjacent to, and sometimes amid, one another. Both communities are largely and consciously oblivious of one another despite having frequent economic encounters. Each places its messianic hopes upon Jerusalem — as Ir ha-Kodesh and Al-Quds — though, ironically, both are joined by the overarching goal of living without the other in the Holy City. At times, the unharmonious coexistence breaks down, exposing deep reservoirs of hatred and injustice.

This tale of two cities, at once segregated, was never clearer to me than during a recent visit. I was in Jerusalem to attend the quadrennial World Congress of Jewish Studies, a gathering of thousands of scholars held at the Hebrew University campus on Mount Scopus. The inauguration of the university 84 years ago was heralded as an act of millennial significance that would allow for the rise of a new world center of Jewish scholarship.

Every four years at the World Congress, I am reminded of this while traversing the university hallways to find colleagues from almost every continent. It is a joyous, stimulating and often comic Tower of Babel that reinforces Jerusalem as the global center of Jewish studies. 

And yet, the thrilling sense I had on Mount Scopus’ heights was quickly dissipated after traveling a few miles down the hill to the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. There, I encountered Maher Hanoun, whose extended family was evicted by Israeli police from his home in a raid on Aug. 2. The Hanoun family — along with the Gawi family — has for years been subjected to unrelenting pressure from various Jewish groups to leave their homes. Immediately after the eviction of 17 members of the Hanouns and 38 members of the Gawis, religious nationalist settlers occupied the houses — yet another step in their plan to “Judaize” Jerusalem and rid it of its Arab residents. 

Maher Hanoun has lived in his home in Sheikh Jarrah for more than 50 years. He has spent decades and precious financial resources warding off claims to his property from the Sephardic Council of Jerusalem, which asserted that its deed to his property from Ottoman times superseded his property rights established during Jordanian control of East Jerusalem from 1948 to 1967. In May, an Israeli court ruled that the Council and the Nachlat Shimon nonprofit corporation could gain control over the property and evict the Hanouns and Gawis. Regrettably, this decision casts a dark pall over the Israeli legal system — often deemed the shining light of Israel’s democracy — which has repeatedly, with a few notable exceptions, privileged Jewish citizens over Arab citizens in their respective claims to the precious terrain of the Holy Land.

The grounds for this discrimination date back to the early years of the State of Israel when the Knesset passed laws that enabled the state to claim — which is to say expropriate — millions of dunams belonging to Arab residents displaced by the 1948 war, even if they were still living within its borders. These acts provided a legal and political rationale for favoring Jewish over Arab claims. Consequently, it seems perfectly normal nowadays for courts to rule in favor of Jewish litigants. By contrast, it is unimaginable that an Israeli court would be sympathetic to an Arab claim. What would happen if a 1948 Palestinian refugee presented a deed to an Israeli court to reclaim his home in Jerusalem’s upscale neighborhood of Talbieh? In the best of cases, he would be laughed out of the room.

What makes the Sheikh Jarrah case so poignant is that Maher Hanoun is a man of peace and reconciliation. With nowhere to move, he refuses to leave his neighborhood, choosing to sleep outside with his family across the street from his home. Even under such tiring circumstances, he is filled with neither vitriol nor vengeance. He believes that Jews and Arabs can live side by side, each in their own sovereign state. He is heartened by the support of some Israeli Jews who visited him to express solidarity. His decency of spirit makes the case all the more inexplicable and unjust.

The Jewish thinker Simon Rawidowicz once expressed fear that when Jews assumed sovereignty in 1948, they would forget their experience of living as a national minority for millennia and become — in the words of the Proverbs — “a servant who comes to reign.” The insensitivity of the Israeli courts, political system and the public — complicit in, but not restricted to, the Sheikh Jarrah case — makes Rawidowicz’s words seem prophetic. 

Maher Hanoun and his family — who now dwell on the sidewalks of Jerusalem — remind us how that sacred and contested space is less a City of Peace than two separate and unequal worlds. Sadly, they evoke the haunting admonition of Herbert Samuel, British high commissioner to Palestine, to Chaim Weizmann in 1921: “Unless there is very careful steering, it is upon the Arab rock that the Zionist ship may be wrecked.”

David N. Myers is professor of Jewish history at UCLA and the author of “Between Jew and Arab: The Lost Voice of Simon Rawidowicz” (Brandeis, 2008).

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Between Destruction and Redemption

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This year, the Saturday following Tisha B’Av, Shabbat Nachamu (the “Sabbath of Consolation”), was shattered by violence as a masked gunman opened fire on a crowd of teenagers gathered at the Tel Aviv Gay and Lesbian Youth Center. This year, the close of Tu B’Av days later on Aug. 5 was marked by dozens of vigils throughout the country that mourned the victims of this senseless act of hatred and intolerance.

Tu B’Av is a holiday unfamiliar to many American Jews, but its theme is among the most resonant in our tradition:  love, commitment and marriage. In Israel, Tu B’Av is a popular day — a kind of Jewish Valentine’s Day — when couples marry, reaffirm vows and dedicate love songs to each other on the radio. In the wake of Proposition 8, which revoked the right of LGBT couples to marry in the state of California, Progressive Jewish Alliance, Jewish Mosaic, California Faith for Equality and the Institute for Judaism and Sexual Orientation joined together to encourage Jews to celebrate Tu B’Av with a recommitment to the struggle for marriage equality.

What can Tu B’Av teach us?

Tu B’Av teaches us that love and equality are intertwined, a belief espoused by the women of Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. The Mishnah (second century C.E.) relates that on Tu B’Av the young women would dance and sing in the streets to attract their future husbands. Garbed in borrowed white clothing, the women exhorted the men to refrain from choosing vanity and economic attainment and instead to focus on inner beauty and good family stock. The women believed that, in the realm of love, leveling the playing field is critical. For modern Jews, Tu B’Av presents us with an opportunity to emphasize traditional virtues, but also to stand with those among our children, brothers, sisters, congregants and friends who have been historically shut out and support them in their quest for equal rights in California and beyond.

Tu B’Av teaches us that society evolves, and progress is possible. Jewish tradition teaches that Tu B’Av marks the day when the ban on intertribal marriage was lifted, when unions once deemed illegal became acceptable and respected. Tu B’Av was the day when people were able to marry whomever they loved, without communal restrictions. The lifting of this ban 2,000 years ago offers those of us who felt disheartened by November’s setback in the struggle for LGBT equality the critical life necessity of hope. Systems evolve, and change happens.

And Tu B’Av teaches us that hope springs eternal. The fact that 78 percent of Los Angeles Jewry voted against Proposition 8 is a testament to the power of hope. Thinking back only a few years, many of us would not have thought this strong support for LGBT rights possible. Indeed, promise can rise from despair, and wholeness from destruction. Only seven days before Tu B’Av we marked another significant moment in Jewish history, Tisha B’Av (the ninth of Av), the holiday that marks the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem. Tu B’Av’s proximity to Tisha B’Av reminds us that even after our darkest moments, joy and wholeness are possible. As we mourn the victims of the bombing in Tel Aviv, Tu B’Av can strengthen our conviction that the despair so many of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters have felt will end.

So until full rights and security are established for LGBT families, please consider celebrating Tu B’Av a little differently in the years to come: 

• Begin by honoring love generally in your life, by letting your dear ones know how you feel about them, and by affirming the right of the LGBT community to celebrate love and marriage with each other.

• Wear white to express our solidarity with the LGBT community. By wearing white clothing, we express our belief in the egalitarianism and inclusivity espoused and demonstrated by the women of Jerusalem so long ago. 

• Share the inspiration of Tu B’Av with your loved ones. Go to pjatubav.weebly.com to learn more about this little-known holiday and to find suggested action steps for staying connected to the struggle for marriage equality.

• Donate to the fund established to assist the gay and lesbian youth in Israel who were targeted in the recent shooting. Go to the “support” page at jewishmosaic.org.

In these weeks after Tisha B’Av and before the High Holy Days, the time between destruction and redemption, let us work for a world where love conquers all and the arc of history slowly but inevitably bends toward justice.

Rabbi John L. Rosove is senior rabbi of Temple Israel of Hollywood. Jaime Rapaport is the Southern California regional director of Progressive Jewish Alliance, which serves as a vehicle connecting Jews to the critical social justice issues of the day and to the cities in which they live.

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Service Honors Victims ofTel Aviv Attack

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In the flicker of a yahrtzeit candle, congregants and community guests rose and draped their arms around each others’ shoulders. As Cantor David Berger strummed the first chords of “Oseh Shalom,” men and women began to sway.

“This prayer is about peace,” Berger said. “It’s about a peace that has no room for intolerance, no room for hatred or violence.”

Few of the 150 or so visitors at Beth Chayim Chadashim (BCC) the night of Aug. 5 were unfamiliar with those concepts. That’s why many gathered at the predominantly gay and lesbian synagogue for a service memorializing the victims of the Aug. 1 attack on a Tel Aviv LGBT teen center — to offer solidarity and universal support.

“People need to come together as a community when we experience acts of violence like this,” said Rabbi Lisa Edwards, the spiritual leader of BCC, after the service. “It feels personal, even though it occurred so far away. So many of us in Los Angeles feel very attached to Israel, and in the worldwide LGBT community we feel very attached to one another. It’s about speaking out for those kids [in Tel Aviv] and also knowing that none of us are very far away from the possibility of something like that happening to us.”

Shock and sorrow over the incident were still fresh at the memorial service. Four days prior, a masked gunman broke into the basement meeting room of a gay and lesbian teen support group and opened fire on the crowd, killing two people and wounding a dozen others. Nir Katz, 26, a counselor at the center, and Liz Trobishi, 16, a visitor, were shot dead at the scene, and a third victim died later at a hospital.

Israeli lawmakers and religious leaders condemned the shooting, which sparked rallies and vigils in Tel Aviv and in cities throughout Europe and the United States. Many of the teenage victims of the attack — the worst against Israeli gays and lesbians on record — had not yet come out to their families.

The assault “came from a place of pure hate,” said Joel Kushner, director of the Institute for Judaism and Sexual Orientation at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in Los Angeles. The community center was a “sacred space” for those who sought refuge there — the only place where some could truly be themselves.

“Those most vulnerable of youths had already traveled so far, physically and emotionally, to get to that meeting. Now, their souls have been injured, and some have lost their lives,” Kushner told the crowd during the service. “If you have thought back on what it was like to be young and gay or lesbian, bisexual or questioning, or if you thought, ‘that could be my kid,’ now is the time to think about that again. They are us, many years ago. They are our children; they are our family members and friends.”

Photographs of Katz and Trobishi adorned the podium as a roster of Jewish and LGBT community leaders addressed the crowded sanctuary. Representatives from each of the program’s sponsors spoke, including BCC, Congregation Kol Ami, the Metropolitan Community Church-L.A., The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and the Board of Rabbis of Southern California.

Andrew Kushner, The Federation’s associate executive vice president of community affairs, said the agency will be providing financial support to the Tel Aviv LGBT community. Costs include extra security around the center, extra staff to run an emergency crisis hotlineand counseling for the teens who witnessed the shooting and the victims’ families.

“Frankly, tonight, all of our hearts are broken,” he said.

Israeli Deputy Consul General Gil Artzyeli said the attack stood in “complete contradiction to the values of the vast majority of Israeli society,” and expressed hope that the gunman would be caught.

Speakers read quotes from the prophet Isaiah and passages from Israeli poets offering images of hope amid darkness and despair. Some visitors held hands during the service and dabbed at their eyes with tissues.

David Tiktin, a West Hollywood resident and member of Kol Ami, recalled touring Israel last summer and visiting LGBT organizations and centers. “It’s all the more shocking and sad to see that they’re still vulnerable to this kind of attack in 2009,” he said.

As a lesbian Latina, BCC member Yael Gillette said she knows what it’s like to be on the receiving end of hateful acts and felt personally injured when she heard about the Tel Aviv attack. “Anytime anyone gets hurt because they are different is unacceptable,” said Gillette, a mother of three. “There is a global need for understanding.”

For many, the most difficult question after the service was “What next?”

The short-term answer, said HUC-JIR’s Joel Kushner, is tzedakah. He urged the L.A. Jewish community to give what it could to allay the costs of repairing the basement facility where the attack occurred — it will take needed funds for services as basic as fixing the center’s furniture and cleaning its blood-spattered floor.

In the long run, local Jewish leaders said the tragedy highlighted a need for the LGBT community to do more outreach and give their identity a face to which others can relate.

“When you forget that someone is human, you can’t connect to their humanity — that’s how acts of hate and violence are perpetuated,” said Elissa Barrett, executive director of the Progressive Jewish Alliance. “When we talk to someone face-to-face and show them our humanity, it’s harder to hate.”

For more information about LGBT youth in Israel or to make a donation, visit ” title=”www.glbt.org.il” target=”_blank”>www.glbt.org.il (in Hebrew).

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